A typical method of authentication uses a user's signature, often thought to be unique to the user, and irreproducible by anyone other than the user. This signature is often created at the time of creation of an account that is associated with the user. Banks often require a physical signature to be filed at the time of creation of an account and use this signature for verification of the user in negotiating financial instruments. These signatures are often stored on signature cards at the bank and are compared manually by bank employees when attempting to authenticate a user. Other entities, such as credit card processors, require a signature to authenticate a transaction.
Although prevalent, the use of traditional signatures for authentication comes with several drawbacks. For instance, an individual determined to fake a signature can do so through the use of a professional artist. Signatures are also static in that they use a fixed and limited set of characters and character sequences. This only increases the likelihood that they can be forged by an artist. Furthermore, the verification of a signature usually requires a professional to compare a sample deemed authentic with the sample that is desired to be verified. This process is usually time consuming—thereby not allowing a signature to be used for real-time or dynamic authentication of a user. The process can also be costly due to the use of experts and thus not economically feasible. In addition, a degree of subjectivity would be present, thus often allowing for false positives and false negatives to be created during the process. Even experts only look for certain fixed characteristics associated with handwriting, such as the slant, curvature, or shape of loops. Experts cannot dynamically generate new sets of characteristics for more detailed analysis.
Additionally, a user can have slightly different signature at different times, as a human signature is never exactly reproducible. Thus, an exact comparison of even a pre-recorded electronic signature with a signature to be tested would not efficiently solve the problem of verifying a user by his or her signature.
A further drawback of this system is the inability of individuals untrained in writing of other scripts to perform even a cursory review of a signature when the signature is written in another script. Additionally, user data typically associated with a user can be easily accessible by a user through the use of his or her intrinsic handwriting style, obviating the need for a user to remember user identifiers and associated passwords and instead providing access through the use of the methods described herein.
Thus, it can be beneficial to provide an exemplary system, method, and computer-accessible medium for dynamic authentication of a user through the use of a handwriting style as opposed to a fixed signature as described herein.